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Abstract

In the last few years, a mobile wireless sensor and its application in wireless sensor network (WSN) are commonly used. Localization of a mobile sensor node is considered a critical issue in some WSN applications. In this paper, an outdoor environments experiment was carried out to measure the distance between the mobile node and the coordinator node in a simple point-to-point ZigBee WSN. The distance was determined based on the measured Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) of the mobile node by the coordinator node. In addition, a Log-Normal Shadowing Model (LNSM) was derived for outdoor condition. Moreover, the parameters of the propagation channel such as standard deviation and a path loss exponent were estimated. The RSSI was measured and analysed for outdoor environments for a distance range 1-100 m. The measurements were carried out by using 2.4 GHz ZigBee wireless protocol based on XBee series 2 modules.
The results disclosed that the mean absolute error (MAE) of 3.44 and 6.72 m for a distance range 0-65 m and 0-100 m, respectively. These results point that the LNSM is only suited for short distance.

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